We’re having a mayoral election in LA this year and like most of the political world right now, it’s incredibly stupid. It’s another of those popular races that take up the news these days—a progressive democratic socialist, Nithya Raman, against an establishment liberal incumbent, Karen Bass. The establishment does not like this (surprise, surprise). Meanwhile, every time there’s news about this thing, I want to slam my head into the wall in disbelief that Raman isn’t running away with it.
Just today, Bass came out in favor of the potential merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers, even though just yesterday it was reported that the merger would cost Los Angeles over 10,000 total jobs between entertainment and the businesses it supports—around $2.8 billion in the local economy, gone. The Writers Guild immediately issued a statement tearing Bass apart.
There was also a kind of insane warehouse fire in Boyle Heights this year that saw no city declarations for evacuation—only Bass, who spent the first two days of the fire out of the city, telling residents the air was not dangerous. (That ‘safe’ air caused hundreds to suffer health affects directly from exposure.)
Of course, this is all after Bass botched her oversight of the wildfires that burned the Palisades and Altadena to the ground in January of 2025. Los Angeles has also seen cuts to city service budgets in order to give the LAPD more cash. (The LAPD already had an annual budget of over three billion dollars.)
While the criticism could continue, the point is this: All over the United States, in governments local and national alike, establishment democrats are being called out for their decades of stalled policy, lack of ambition, and corporate interests being prioritized over serving the public. What makes me crazy is that the general public is somewhere between fearful of and hateful toward the label of socialism, even if policies like upgrading infrastructure or improving conditions for schools are wildly popular.
Red Scare tactics have proven very successful in the United States, where even ‘liberal’ cities like LA have a substantial population that doesn’t want to lean too far to the left. (What that political ideology actually looks like is beyond me—but I’m pretty sure it’s more in alignment with fascism than humanism.) As conditions continue to rapidly decay while wealth consolidates in the hands of a few, I wonder at what point people will come around to the idea of listening to voices from the left—or if by that time there’ll be anything left to actually govern.
